Image of a Senator: D'Amato Sticks to Local Interests

Two years into his second term, Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, confident, brash and popular, appears to be redefining what it means to be a New York Senator.

He is making it respectable for the first time in decades to act as an unabashed advocate for the state's parochial interests, rather than as its dignified ambassador to Washington and the world, the model personified by figures such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jacob K. Javits, Robert F. Kennedy and Robert F. Wagner.

Once derided as a coarse machine politician who had somehow overachieved his way into the nation's most elite club, the New York Republican has gradually garnered a new, improved reputation as the state's great and effective champion, a useful ally and a dangerous enemy, one part poker player, two parts bull terrier. Senator's Ethics Are Questioned

''We've been seeing an interesting evolution with Al D'Amato,'' said Norman Ornstein, a resident fellow and congressional analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. ''He's moved up in the Senate, he's gained stature, he's become a lot sharper and more sophisticated.''

Yet somehow, Mr. D'Amato has accomplished all this without ever quite shaking the image that many people have of him as a politician who sometimes skates dangerously close to the edge of proper conduct.

He has been investigated by Federal and local prosecutors on several occasions, though in no case has any illegality been proved. Questions have been raised about his ethics, his friends and the way he goes about the business of poltics. Questions on Wedtech

Why has he been so singled out? ''It's a number of circumstances,'' Mr. D'Amato said in a recent interview. ''Partly, it's because I come out of a political-machine background where you had practices that were accepted then but which I've since said are not acceptable. And a little of it is unfairness by those who never wanted me to run for Senator in the first place or who are way over on the far left.''

Most recently, controversy regarding Mr. D'Amato has centered on his involvement with the Wedtech Corporation, the Bronx military contractor that law enforcement authorities have branded a racketeering enterprise.

Mario Moreno, the former Wedtech vice president who is now cooperating with Federal prosecutors in return for leniency, testified that he made more than $30,000 in what he considered to be illegal campaign contributions to Mr. D'Amato while the Senator was helping Wedtech win lucrative military contracts.

He is not a target or subject of the Wedtech investigations, the prosecutor's office said Monday. But a politician of Mr. D'Amato's experience, critics say, should have been aware that Wedtech was stuffing money into his campaign coffers in an effort to harness his power and influence.

Mr. D'Amato said that any implication of wrongdoing on his part was ''ridiculous.'' Testifying Friday at the Federal trial of Representative Mario Biaggi, a Bronx Democrat accused of taking payments from Wedtech in return for favors, Mr. D'Amato said that he had only wanted to give Wedtech what he had given dozens of other New York companies: ''a fair opportunity, a fair shot to compete.'' He said he had no knowledge whatever of illegal campaign contributions.

In recent days, too, a number of public interest groups have suggested that Mr. D'Amato has chosen nominees for life-tenured Federal judgeships on the basis of patronage rather than merit. He says that accusation, too, is unfair. Dirt Under Nails, Sweat on Collars

Not quite articulated by Mr. D'Amato but clearly implied is a belief that those who labor in the rocky vineyard of politics have to be forgiven if a little dirt gets under their nails, a little sweat on their collars.

''His argument is that this is the way it works,'' said Mark Green, who ran against him in 1986 and is now President of the Democracy Project, a liberal public policy research organization in Manhattan. ''But shouldn't we be looking to a higher standard than that?''

Mr. Ornstein seemed to take a middle position. ''If guilt by association applied, D'Amato would be in the slammer for life with no chance for parole,'' he said. ''But New Yorkers don't pay much attention to this stuff unless there's a smoking gun. They're cynical and skeptical enough to have the sense that maybe he does a few things that are not quite so kosher to get his way, but he does it for New York, not to line his own pockets.'' He Enjoys the Perquisites

The Senator has said he is poorer now than when he came to Washington, estimating his net worth at less than $125,000, most of that represented by appreciation on a ranch house in Island Park, L.I., purchased more than than a quarter century ago.

When he goes home, his wife, Penny, is often there to greet him, despite the fact that they have been legally separated for six years. She keeps her own apartment not far away. ''We still have a relationship as parents and as friends,'' he said. ''She's a great lady.''

Mr. D'Amato clearly enjoys his position and the perquisites it carries, from the chauffered car with the constantly ringing telephone to the lunches with financiers in Manhattan and dinners with lobbyists on Capitol Hill to the never-ending round of town meetings, ''photo opportunities'' and other events with constituents - ''my people'' he calls them - around the state. The Grooming Of a Town Politician

Mr. D'Amato, the son of an insurance broker, graduated from Syracuse University's law school in 1961 and sought a career on Wall Street. But without exceptional grades, background or experience, ''That wasn't difficult for me, it was impossible,'' he said. So he moved back to Long Island where he was hired as a law clerk in the Nassau County Attorney's office.

He quickly became the protege of Joseph M. Margiotta, boss of the powerful Nassau County Republican political machine, working his way through a succession of jobs in the local courts and government, including Island Park Village Attorney, Public Administrator in the Nassau County Surrogate's Court and Hempstead Town's Receiver of Taxes. In 1971 he was elected Supervisor of Hempstead and six years later he became the town's Presiding Supervisor, essentially the Mayor, as well as majority leader of the Nassau County Board of Supervisors.

In 1983 Mr. Margiotta lost his dynasty and began a two-year prison term on Federal mail fraud and extorion charges. For a decade, he had pressed insurance brokers handling policies for Nassau County and the Town of Hempstead into splitting commissions with Republican politicians.

Under Mr. Margiotta's reign, local government workers were also coerced into kicking back 1 percent of their salary as a contribution to the Republican Party.

The grand jury that indicted Mr. Margiotta implicated but did not charge Mr. D'Amato in the insurance scheme, saying that the Hempstead Supervisor ''would appoint or dismiss'' insurance brokers as directed by the Republican leader.

In 1975 Mr. D'Amato denied knowing about the kickbacks but 10 years later, when he was a Senator, there emerged a letter written by him in 1971 referring directly to the practice. He then admitted that he had known, saying, ''I suppose there were those who probably felt there was some undue force to contribute,'' and adding, ''In retrospect, it may have been wrong.'' Senate Victory, Then Scrutiny

In 1980, backed by Mr. Margiotta but opposed by many other state Republican leaders, Mr. D'Amato challenged Senator Javits in the primary. ''I took a lot of heat for that,'' he said.

At another stage in his political life, Mr. Javits might have laughed off an attack by a town politician from Long Island. But by this time he had weaknesses that Mr. D'Amato did not hesitate to exploit. As one D'Amato television advertisement described Mr. Javits: ''And now, at age 76 and in failing health, he wants six more years.''

In the general election, Mr. Javits ran on the Liberal Party line, splitting the vote on the left between himself and Elizabeth Holtzman, the Democratic candidate. Alone on the right, running on the Republican, Conservative and Right-to-Life tickets in the year Ronald Reagan took the country by storm, Mr. D'Amato walked away with 45.1 percent of the total, a paper-thin 1 percentage-point margin of victory over Ms. Holtzman.

Questions about Mr. D'Amato were soon raised. First came his campaign financing. A New York bank in which he had desposited taxpayer money while serving as Presiding Supervisor had loaned him $80,000 at 8 points below the prevailing prime rate. A Justice Department investigation concluded that the Senator had violated no Federal laws.

Then, a Nassau County district attorney looked into his role in the awarding of a cable-television contract when he was Presiding Supervisor, and the Organized Crime Strike Force in the Eastern District of New York explored accusations that he had been involved in payoffs for construction contracts at a Hempstead garbage recycling plant. In both cases, he was exonerated. In 1982, he accepted a campaign contribution from the Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman, John S. R. Shad, at a time when he headed the Banking subcommittee charged with overseeing the S.E.C. No one called that illegal, but a debate over the ethics of taking the money ensued.

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In 1983, Mr. D'Amato stirred controversy yet again when he became the only witness for the defense at the trial of Philip Basile, a Long Island night club owner. Mr. Basile was convicted of conspiring with a leader of the Lucchese organized crime family to arrange a no-show job for an imprisoned mafia soldier seeking parole. Mr. D'Amato called Mr. Basile a friend, and testified that he was a ''man of integrity.'' 'Favor Banking,' A Guiding Principle

Last month, among those the Senator nominated for a Federal judgeship was Robert Roberto Jr., a New York Supreme Court Justice who in 1984 cleared the way for Mr. Basile to regain his liquor license. Mr. Basile was represented in that proceeding by the Senator's brother, Assemblyman Armand D'Amato, Republican of Mineola.

The Alliance for Justice, a coalition of more than a dozen liberal public interest groups, expressed ''great concern'' about the nomination. An evaluation committee of the American Bar Association rated Mr. Roberto as ''well qualified,'' a category that is second from the top and third from the bottom.

Another D'Amato nominee, Howard E. Levitt, was a former law partner of Mr. Margiotta. He too was rated by the A.B.A as ''well qualified.''

A third candidate, Stuart A. Summit, received the lower A.B.A. rating of ''qualified'' from a majority of the committee and a ''not qualified'' rating from a minority. Mr. Summit had been a law partner of former Deputy Attorney General Arnold I. Burns.

The 50-year-old Mr. D'Amato does not so much discuss these situations as wave them away. He characterized as ''silly'' a 1982 New York Times editorial criticizing his role in the Nassau County kickback scheme. In 1986, when Mr. Green asserted that Mr. D'Amato had received a ''pattern of gifts'' from ''members of organized crime,'' the Senator called the accusation ''silly, rather desperate.'' As for his defense of Mr. Basile, he said: ''What was I going to do? Turn my back on the fella?''

And regarding his nominations for Federal judgeships, he said only: ''You have to look at the totality of my appointments.''

John Buckley, a Republican political strategist, said that a crucial thing to understand about Mr. D'Amato is his firm belief in the practice of political ''favor banking.''

What that means, he said, is that ''to D'Amato one good turn always deserves another but one good slight deserves an equal if not accelerated slight. That philosophy is a large step away from the tradition of New York senators who ponder the constitutional and historical implications of their acts.''

Thomas Mann, an expert on the Congress at the Brookings Institution, said he saw two reasons why Mr. D'Amato has been able to avoid damage from questions about the propriety of his conduct.

''No one has ever really pinned anything on him legally,'' he said, ''and, in broader political terms, the charges are not incompatible with people's perceptions of him. People aren't going to get angry because D'Amato acts like an old-style pol. He makes no bones about that.'' Energies Fixed On State Issues

But in some ways, Mr. D'Amato has changed over the last seven and a half years. Although he still speaks with the strangled vowels and clashing consonants of Western Long Island, he has mastered the art of playing to an audience. For example, at a town meeting in Ozone Park recently, he found himself at the end of a long panel of speakers, representatives of local government and law enforcement agencies, each of whom stepped up to the microphone and reassured the people of Queens that something was indeed being done about the menace of drug use in their community.

The Senator, however, received the loudest applause by taking the opposite tack. ''The Government,'' he shouted angrily, ''has not done enough.''

More substantively, in his first term, Mr. D'Amato's attention seldom strayed from the narrow concerns of the state and its communties. ''We did a tremendous amount of constituent services,'' said Bruce Ray, until last year the Senator's legislative director. ''I'm not talking about just case work, social security payments for retirees and that sort of thing. We were the representatives of the state's mayors, county executives, town boards, the State Assembly and the Senate.''

Now, increasingly, the Senator has also begun to tackle larger policy issues, though invariably those issues arise from local interests. For example, he has involved himself in the debate over Panama because drugs flow from there and drug abuse troubles New Yorkers. He worries about the environment because many New York communities are afflicted by toxic waste and acid rain.

All the committees on which Mr. D'Amato serves - Appropriations; Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; Small Business, and Joint Economic -are sources of meat and potatoes for the state.

Among the legislative initiatives on which he has concentrated since his re-election in 1986 are last year's highway bill, in which he was largely responsible for preserving a provision written by him five years earlier, providing that one out of every 5 cents in gasoline taxes goes to mass transit. Over the next five years, that is expected to bring $712 million to the mass transit systems of New York.

He was a key factor in the two major housing bills passed last year and is currently working on a new housing program emphasizing incentives for the private sector to build more ''affordable'' housing.

And D'Amato ammendments to recent drug bills have made it simpler for law enforcement authorities to go after laundered money and seize the assets of drug dealers. He also managed to have 100 Customs Service agents reassigned to the New York metropolitan region for the purpose of searching for drugs coming in from abroad.

Beyond that, there have been dozens of what one supporter calls ''pork chops,'' little boons to New York communities that he pursues with dogged persistence. For example, he squeezed money out of the Federal Aviation Administration for the improvement of several small upstate airports and twisted the arm of the Department of Housing and Urban Development to get Federal mortgage insurance for two Albany hospitals whose credit looked shaky.

Mr. D'Amato is not the kind of legislator who spends long hours in a quiet, book-lined library studying reports and background on issues of interest to him. Instead, he likes to absorb his information either in fast-fire briefings or over the telephone that seems to continually sprout from his ear. He dislikes paperwork, leaving most of it to members of his staff.

Within the New York Congressional delegation and the Republican state party hierarchy, the Senator has many admirers who assert that that is the approach of a lawmaker who knows how to avoid being overwhelmed, sidetracked or bogged down. Others, however, suggest that his style demonstrates too little thoughtfulness and too much desire to figure out which side of an issue it will be most politically advantageous to support. 'What Do My People Want?'

Richard Fenno, a political scientist at the University of Rochester who is writing a book on the Senate, said that both views may contain some validity. There is room in Washington, he said, for legislators who are ''policy creative,'' like Mr. Moynihan, and those who are ''bargaining-creative,'' like Mr. D'Amato. ''Both talents are useful,'' he said.

Putting it another way, Dr. Mann said: ''Moynihan asks himself, 'What do we as a people need?' While D'Amato asks himself, 'What do my people want?' ''

However one evaluates Mr. D'Amato abilities and approach, he has succeeded with the electorate. In 1986, he won 57.6 percent of the vote, a record margin for a Republican in a statewide race in New York. And recent polls by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., have found that his popularity remains high, right up there with Mr. Moynihan's.

In some ways, Washington may be becoming a tougher place for a politician with Mr. D'Amato's skills to operate. Since the Republicans became the minority party in the Senate, Mr. D'Amato acknowledged, it has become more and more difficult for him to develop and pass legislation. Increasingly, too, a Federal revenue pie that is not getting much bigger is being divided among the states according to rigid formulas, leaving less opportunities for adept bargainers like Mr. D'Amato.

The Senator still manages to pry favors for the state out of the White House but those doors may be harder to open after November.

''It will be interesting to watch if D'Amato has to deal with a Democratic administration,'' said Mr. Ornstein. ''My guess is that somehow he'll still be able to do business.''

Correction:

Thursday, Late City Final Edition An article on May 11 about Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato of New York misstated the percentage of his 1986 election victory. In the final tally, the Senator, a Republican, received 56.9 percent of the votes. The record margin of victory for Republican in a statewide election in New York was 57.4 percent won by Senator Jacob K. Javits in 1962.

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A version of this article appears in print on May 11, 1988, on Page B00001 of the National edition with the headline: Image of a Senator: D'Amato Sticks to Local Interests. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe